[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18980-18982]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MIKE MANSFIELD

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President:

     When I remember all
     The friends, so link'd together,
     I've seen around me fall
     Like leaves in wintry weather,
     I feel like one
     Who treads alone
     Some banquet-hall deserted,
     Whose lights are fled,
     Whose garlands dead,
     And all but he departed!
     Thus, in the stilly night,
     'Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
     Sad Memory brings the light
     Of other days around me.

  Mr. President, in June 1970, it was my honor and privilege as the 
then Secretary of the Senate Democratic party conference to go to this 
floor and make the announcement that Senator Mike Mansfield had become 
the longest serving majority leader in history.
  Today, it is with sadness that I come to the Senate floor to speak of 
the passing on Friday last of Mike Mansfield, and of his service to 
this Chamber and to our country.
  Mike Mansfield personified both America and the American dream. He 
was born in New York City, the son of Irish immigrant parents, in 1903, 
the year in which the Wright Brothers made their historic flight. He 
was raised in his beloved Montana. When he was only 14 years of age, 
without completing the 8th grade, he served first in the U.S. Navy 
during World War I, and eventually in the Army and the Marine Corps--at 
that time, all of the branches of the U.S. military. After the war, he 
became a miner, then a mining engineer.
  At 30 years of age, he was finally able, with the constant help of 
his devoted wife Maureen, to obtain the first of several college 
degrees that would enable him to become a college professor of history 
and political science for almost a decade.
  In 1942, he was first elected to the U.S. Congress and served five 
terms in the House of Representatives. In 1952, Mike was elected to the 
Senate--that was the year in which I was elected to the House of 
Representatives--and began a remarkable quarter-of-a-century of service 
in this Chamber, a career that included being elected Senate majority 
whip in 1957.

[[Page 18981]]

  In January 1961, Senator Mansfield was elected Senate majority 
leader, and he served in that capacity until 1977--one of the most 
turbulent periods in American history. It was a time of assassinations 
and riots, marches and demonstrations, war and anti-war protests.
  Nevertheless, under his leadership--a leadership that emphasized 
cooperation, honor, fairness, integrity, and negotiation--and a 
leadership style marked by personal conviction and a loyalty to lasting 
principles--the Senate was a place of remarkable legislative 
accomplishments, including the Great Society legislation of the mid 
1960's. That was one of the most productive periods of Congress in 
American history, and Senate Majority Leader Mansfield certainly had an 
important role in it.
  I worked shoulder to shoulder with Mike Mansfield for 10 years on 
this floor, where I served as secretary of the Democratic conference 
for 4 years and as Democratic whip for 6 years.
  After leaving the Senate, he continued his public career by serving 
as the American Ambassador to Japan under Presidents Carter, Reagan, 
and Bush. Mansfield's 12 years as Ambassador to Japan are the longest 
in history.
  Mike Mansfield of Montana was a man of outstanding achievements, a 
remarkable Senator, and an outstanding leader.
  Mr. President, it was on last Friday, that the pallid messenger with 
the inverted torch beckoned Mike Mansfield to depart this life. We can 
believe that he awakened to see a more glorious sunrise with 
unimaginable splendor of a celestial horizon, and that he yet remembers 
us as we remember him, for we have the consolation that has come down 
to us from the lips of that ancient man of Uz, whose name was Job: ``Oh 
that my words were written in a book and engraved with an iron pen, and 
lead in the rock forever, for I know that my redeemer liveth and that 
in the latter day he shall stand upon the earth.''
  Mike Mansfield has now passed from this earthly stage and gone on to 
his eternal reward. The links which connect the glorious past with the 
present have been forever sundered.

     Passing away!
     'Tis told by the leaf which chill autumn breeze,
     Tears ruthlessly its hold from wind-shaken trees;
     'Tis told by the dewdrop which sparkles at morn,
     And when the noon cometh
     'Tis gone, ever gone.

  I always held Mike Mansfield in the highest esteem. He was a 
gentleman with great courage and unwavering patriotism, a wise and 
courageous statesman, affable in his temperament, and regarded as one 
of the outstanding men in the Senate. He was both morally and 
intellectually honest and that is saying a great deal in these times. 
He was simple in his habits and devoid of all hypocrisy and deceit. 
There was not a deceitful cell in his body. He never resorted to the 
tricks of a demagog to gain favor and, although he was a partisan 
Democrat, he divested himself of partisanship when it came to serving 
the best interests of his country. May God rest his soul.

     The potentates on whom men gaze
     When once their rule has reached its goal,
     Die into darkness with their days.
     But monarchs of the mind and soul,
     With light unfailing, and unspent,
     Illumine flame's firmament.

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other great Grecian and Roman 
philosophers, by pure reason and logic arrived at the conclusion that 
there is a creating, directing, and controlling divine power, and to a 
belief in the immortality of the human soul. Throughout the ages, all 
races and all peoples have instinctively so believed. It is the basis 
of all religions, be they Islamic, Hebrew, Christian, or heathen. It is 
believed by savage tribes and by semi-civilized and civilized nations, 
by those who believe in many gods and by those who believe in one God. 
Agnostics and atheists are, and always have been, few in number. Does 
the spirit of man live after it has separated from the flesh? This is 
an age-old question. We are told in the Bible that when God created man 
from the dust of the ground, ``He breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life, and man became a living soul.''
  When the serpent tempted Eve, and induced her to eat the forbidden 
fruit of the tree of knowledge, he said to her, ``ye shall not surely 
die.''
  Scientists cannot create matter or life. They can mold and develop 
both, but they cannot call them into being. They are compelled to admit 
the truth uttered by the English poet Samuel Roberts, when he said:

     That very power that molds a tear
     And bids it trickle from its source,
     That power maintains the earth a sphere
     And guides the planets in their course.

  That power is one of the laws--one of the immutable laws of God, put 
into force at the creation of the universe. From the beginning of 
recorded time to the present day, most scientists have believed in a 
divine creator although I read not too long ago that only about 40 
percent of the scientists in this country believe in a creator. I have 
often asked a physician:

       Doctor, with your knowledge of the marvelous intricacies of 
     the human body and mind, do you believe that there is a God, 
     a Creator?

  Not one physician has ever answered, ``No.''
  Each has answered, readily and without hesitation, ``Yes.'' Some may 
have doubted some of the tenets of the theology of orthodoxy, but they 
do not deny the existence of a creator. Science is the handmaiden of 
true religion, and confirms our belief in the Creator and in 
immortality.
  It was William Jennings Bryan who said:

       If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold 
     and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst 
     forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the 
     earth the soul of man made in the image of his Creator?

  As an aside let me say that I always grow a few tomatoes--about four 
vines. This year I planted four vines, and I had more than 400 tomatoes 
off those four vines. Sometimes I plant the Early Girl, sometimes I 
plant Big Boy or Better Boy. I grow enough tomatoes to furnish my wife 
and myself, also to supply our older daughter and her husband. Our 
grandsons and our granddaughters and their spouses live farther away, 
but sometimes they have some tomatoes for them.

     Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
     And waits to see it break away the clod
     Believes in God.

  As Longfellow said:

       It is not all of life to live, nor all of death to die. 
     Rather, as he says:

     There is no death! What seems so is transition;
     This life of mortal breath
     Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,
     Whose portal we call death.

  Life is but a narrow isthmus between the boundless oceans of two 
eternities. All of us who travel that narrow isthmus today, must one 
day board our little frail barque and hoist its white sails for the 
journey on that vast unknown sea where we shall sail alone into the 
boundless ocean of eternity, there to meet our Creator face to face in 
a land where the roses never wither and the rainbow never fades. Mike 
Mansfield has gone on to meet his pilot face to face. He was 98. I am 
but 84--within 42 days I will reach my 84th birthday. And it won't be 
long until I, too--and then so will you, and so will you--meet our 
pilot face to face.

     Sunset and evening star,
     And one clear call for me
     And may there be no moaning of the bar
     When I put out to sea,
     But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
     Too full for some and foam,
     When that which came from out the boundless deep
     Turns again home.

     Twilight and evening bell
     And after that the dark,
     And may there be no sadness of farewell
     When I embark,
     For though from out our borne of time and place,
     The flood may bear me far
     I hope to see my Pilot face to face
     When I have crost the bar.

  To that borne, from which no traveller ever returns, Mike Mansfield 
has now gone to be reunited with his wife Maureen and others who once 
trod these marble halls, and whose voices once rang in this Chamber.
  I can hear them yet: Hubert Humphrey, Paul Douglas, Allen Ellender,

[[Page 18982]]

Richard B. Russell--who sat at this desk--George Aiken, Everett 
Dirksen, Norris Cotton, ``Scoop'' Jackson--their voices in this earthly 
life have now been forever stilled.
  Mike Mansfield has crossed the Great Divide. Of that illustrious man 
who sat in this Chamber when he and I were young Senators, only Strom 
Thurmond and I remain here today.

     They are drifting away, these friends of old
     Like leaves on the current cast;
     With never a break in their rapid flow
     We count them, as one by one they go
     Into the Dreamland of the Past.

  Erma and I extend our condolences to Mike's daughter, Ann, and to 
others of his family. May his soul rest in peace.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Lincoln). The Senator from Montana.

                          ____________________